Being natural is simply a pose, and the most irritating pose I know.
And what sort of lives do these people, who pose as being moral, lead themselves? My dear fellow, you forget that we are in the native land of the hypocrite.
Memory is the diary that chronicles things that never happened or couldn’t possibly have happened.
The worst of having a romance of any kind is that it leaves one so unromantic.
Oh! it is absurd to have a hard-and-fast rule about what one should read and what one shouldn’t. More than half of modern culture depends on what one shouldn’t read.
It is awfully hard work doing nothing. However, I don’t mind hard work where there is no definite object of any kind. -Algernon.
The gods are strange. It is not our vices only they make instruments to scourge us. They bring us to ruin through what in us is good, gentle, humane, loving.
And all the woe that moved him so That he gave that bitter cry the wild regrets, and the bloody sweats None knew so well as I: For he who lives more lives than one More deaths than one must die.
But beauty, real beauty, ends where an intellectual expression begins. Intellect is in itself a mode of exaggeration, and destroys the harmony of any face.
There are two ways to dislike poetry: One is to dislike it; the other is to read Pope.
You have filled my tea with lumps of sugar, and though I asked most distinctly for bread and butter, you have given me cake. I am known for the gentleness of my disposition, and the extraordinary sweetness of my nature, but I warn you, Miss Cardew, you may go too far.
The smallest act of kindness is worth more than the grandest intention.
I think it’s very healthy to spend time alone. You need to know how to be alone and not be defined by another person.
In all matters of opinion, our adversaries are insane.
You, who know all the secrets of life, tell me how to charm Sibyl Vane to love me! I want to make Romeo jealous, I want the dead lovers of the world to hear our laughter, and grow sad. I want a breath of our passion to stir their dust into consciousness, to wake their ashes into pain.
The best way to appreciate your job is to imagine yourself without one.
How can a woman be expected to be happy with a man who insists on treating her as if she were a perfectly normal human being.
Democracy means simply the bludgeoning of the people by the people for the people.
The old believe everything, the middle-aged suspect everything, the young know everything.
One should never trust a woman who tells one her real age. A woman who would tell one that would tell one anything.